Posts Tagged ‘Patriot Post’

Obama and the Socialist Bourgeoisie

“I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.” –Benjamin Franklin

If there is one generalization that can be accurately asserted about Barack Hussein Obama and generations of Marxists before him, it is that they are and always have been, universally, hypocrites. They preach classist sermons to the masses, the foundational fodder upon which their failed socialist regimes are constructed, all while living lavish lifestyles characterized by elitism and overly conspicuous consumption.

This generalization holds not just for Western socialists, but also for their Soviet-era mentors, of which I am a first-hand witness.

In 1987, I stepped off an Aeroflot Tu-124 at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, grateful that the “aircraft” had made it all the way to our destination. My moment of gratitude was abruptly interrupted at the bottom of the aircraft steps by two pallid gents in off-the-rack suits who were accompanied by two humorless uniformed Militsiya regulars.

Apparently, my reputation had preceded me.

The suited fellows, representatives of the Soviet Committee for State Security, offered not so much as a simple “welcome.” Rather, they insisted that I turn over my credentials and possessions, and accompany them for an “interview.” We left the airport and drove to an aging gray building in central Moscow directly across from the Kremlin.

Once inside the building, my hosts informed me that I was a “guest” of the state, and would remain so until such time they determined I could leave. I was taken to a third-floor room, rather sparse in its furnishings, where I remained for three days. Though the accommodations were not up to Bedouin tent standards, the room did have a window with a splendid view of two entrances into the Kremlin.

Through that window by night shined the ominous Red Star atop Spasskaya Tower. By day, I could observe all the movement into and out of the Kremlin.

There was a sea of ubiquitous Soviet state-made autos making their way through the plaza in front of the Kremlin — Volgas, Ladas and Moskvichs, most of which were as old as (and in no better operating condition) than the Tu-124 on which I had arrived. What I recall most was how that sea of decrepit autos parted with regularity to allow unhindered passage of shiny ZIL-117 curtained limousines carting members of the Soviet Politicheskoye Byuro on their way to elegant meals in stylish places that no common Soviet citizen could enter.

Surely the great vision of human liberation from capitalism envisioned by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels did not include limousine liberals?

Shortly after the Demo’s 2008 “October Surprise,” that politically fortuitous collapse of the U.S. securities markets that Obama rode into office, I recall one of his earliest condemnations of corporate execs “flying around the nation on private jets” while their companies were sinking into bankruptcy.

At the time, Obama had just stepped off the most expensive luxury jet in the world, Air Force One, which costs far more to operate and maintain for every minute of flight than the largest of corporate jets cost for hours, or even days, of flight. Just like his socialist mentors, Obama acknowledged not even a hint of the hypocrisy.

Since then, he has logged many, many more hours on Air Force One, in transit to more luxurious vacation destinations and elite political confabs than any nouveau riche lucky lottery winner has in first class seats to Vegas — and all while our nation is sinking into bankruptcy.

Obama is just the latest of the Socialist Bourgeoisie political aristocracy to occupy the White House, the first being Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who did more to undermine liberty and free enterprise than any president — until Obama. (I suspect Rahm Emanuel plagiarized Obama’s rule number one, “Never allow a crisis to go to waste,” from FDR.)

According to Marxist doctrine, manifest in Obama’s classist rhetoric, the bourgeoisie are defined as the dominant ruling-class who control the means of production in a capitalist economy and abuse the proletariat to produce their wealth.

However, what Marx didn’t have was the benefit of observing a mature free enterprise system in operation under a constitutional democratic republic from which strong and healthy middle class economies arise. So strong is the middle class in the U.S. and other industrialized nations, that modern Socialists now use the term “bourgeoisie” to pejoratively depict middle class consumerism.

What Marx unwittingly defined is the nature of Socialist government barons like Obama and his czars, where the dominant ruling class are those in political power who regulate the means of economic production through regulation and taxation in order to reduce the ranks of the middle class and thereby increase the proletariat masses, those to whom the ruling political class can discriminately transfer wealth in return for re-election … until the wealth runs out.

Unfortunately for the proletariat, this transfer of wealth is not sustainable, and the only equality achieved is impoverishment of everyone except the Socialist Bourgeoisie — trickle-up poverty.

That was precisely the result of socialism in the USSR and every other nation where politburos have centralized control over the economy leading to bankrupted nations, all the while, living themselves like the tyrant kings and potentates they ostensibly decry.

And so it is with the Obamas who, along with their Kobe beef-eating entourage, are preparing for their eighth vacation this year — this one to exclusive Martha’s Vineyard for the next 10 days. Maybe this time the family dog Bo will be able to travel on the same plane as his masters and not have to settle for a separate taxpayer-provided Gulfstream 3, as was the case when the Obama’s vacationed in fashionable Bar Harbor, Maine, in July.

As free enterprise bends to the point of breaking under the weight of ever more oppressive taxation and regulation, and statism proceeds to bankrupt the nation, Obama and his Socialist Bourgeoisie are hobnobbing around with the rich and famous. According to his deputy press secretary, “There will be hiking, time at the beach, time at the ice cream store — all the sort of things you do when you’re at Martha’s Vineyard. You enjoy the people and the good food.” And of course, there will be golf at Mink Meadows in Vineyard Haven.

As millions of parents struggle to provide the most basic needs for their children, Barack is eating cake.

While I don’t know what October Surprise the Demos have up their collective sleeve for this fall’s election cycle, I am gravely concerned that, given Obama’s arrogant vacation schedule, it will be more devastating than the mischief they arranged in 2008. However, I remain altogether confident that American Patriots, like our forebears, will defend our Essential Liberty and persevere through whatever trials and foibles arise.

Army Preps for Tea Party ‘Terrorists’

“The duty imposed upon [the president] to take care, that the laws be faithfully executed, follows out the strong injunctions of his oath of office, that he will ‘preserve, protect, and defend the constitution.’ The great object of the executive department is to accomplish this purpose; and without it, be the form of government whatever it may, it will be utterly worthless for offence, or defence; for the redress of grievances, or the protection of rights; for the happiness, or good order, or safety of the people.” –Justice Joseph Story

A few months back, the commander in chief or our Armed Forces, that erstwhile community organizer Barack Hussein Obama, denigrated a large cross section of Americans who identify with the Tea Party movement — those who advocate for Essential Liberty and Rule of Law.

Obama identified them as malcontents, “waving their little tea bags.”

Since then, the Obama administration and their Leftmedia sycophants have endeavored to characterize Tea Party attendees as rude, radical, racist, redneck, enemies of the state.

In fact, Americans who attend Tea Party rallies are from all walks of life, as noted in the Patriot Declaration, Patriots who are peacefully and constitutionally petitioning their government for redress.

As I noted in my tax-day essay, Tea Parties are “not a call for revolution but for restoration — a call to undertake whatever measures are dictated by prudence and necessity to restore constitutional Rule of Law.”

However, Obama’s words do have consequences.

This week, I was contacted by a number of military personnel, enlisted and officer ranks, who expressed concern about a military exercise underway at Ft. Knox, the U.S. Bullion Depository. As with most such exercises, the Ft. Knox alert occurred in stages, as if real time intelligence was being provided at various intervals.

The alert states that plans for the demonstration may have been interrupted by “Federal and local law enforcement” raids on a “White Supremacists Organization,” but “TEA Party organizers have stated that they will protest at the Gold Vault at a future date.”

Further, the intel advisory states, “Anti-Government – Health Care Protesters have stated that they would join the TEA Party as a sign of solidarity.”

In accordance with the exercise, Ft. Knox post security is placed on high alert because, “these groups are armed, have combative training and some are former Military Snipers. Some may have explosives training / experience,” and “a rally at their compound / training area is scheduled.”

Another intel update was issued on Monday, 26 April 2010, noting that the “rally at the Militia compound occurred,” and “Viable threats … have been made.” The intel on the rally notes, “Many members were extremely agitated at what they referred to as Government intervention and over taxation in their lives. Alcohol use ‘fanned the flames.’ Many military grade firearms were openly carried. An ad hoc ‘shoot the government agent’ event was held with prizes (alcohol) given for the best shot placement.”

The report states further, “Components of bomb making are reported to have been on the site. Some members have criminal records relating to explosive and weapons violations.”

In response to the “immediate threat,” the exercise stipulates, “local detention centers are being made ready for mass arrests.” Both the “QRF I and QRF II” are placed on two hour recall, and the “5-15 CAV” was ordered to “draw weapons from holder and store in most available arms room,” and “coordinate with MASA for immediate ammunition draw; have equipment readied for immediate use, i.e. vehicles staged and loaded IAW 5-15 CAV SOP; LMR’s charged.”

The 26 April order gives specific instructions for the 5-15 CAV (a 16th Cavalry battalion) to have weapons, ammo, vehicles and communications at ready, and it places the other 2,200 members of the units on two-hour recall. In other words, these orders are to gear up for defending Ft. Knox against Tea Party folks and their co-conspirators who oppose nationalization of our health care sector.

Now, for almost 30 years I have participated in the development and implementation of small and large scale military exercises within the U.S. and around the world.

Such exercises are critical to the readiness of our forces, and the standard for the real time intel reports in these drills requires thinly veiled references to assets of existing or collateral threat vectors such as communist regimes such as China and real terrorist networks such as al-Qa’ida, etc.

Perhaps the writers of such exercises today should focus on response plans for, say, an Islamic terrorist who attacks a post. (See Ft. Hood / Major Nidal Malik Hasan.)

The Ft. Knox exercise is not only amateurish in its construct, but also sets an ominous political precedent.

The military officers and enlisted personnel with whom I spoke are all dedicated uniformed Patriots who are loyal, first and foremost, to their oath to “support and defend” our Constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

Their concerns about this exercise mirrored my own. As one put it, the exercise “misrepresents freedom loving Americans as drunken, violent racists — the opponents of Obama’s policies have been made the enemy of the U.S. Army.”

They were equally concerned that command staff at Ft. Knox had signed off on this exercise, noting, “it has been issued and owned by field grade officers who lead our battalions and brigades,” which is to say many Lieutenant Colonels saw this order before it was implemented.

It’s not likely that Ft. Knox Commanding General James Milano or Deputy Commander Col. David Teeples, or even the regimental and brigade commanders for the 16th Cav and 194th AB, actually read the exercise scenario, but that doesn’t absolve responsibility for such an egregious example of political exploitation of U.S. forces.

One officer insisted, “The American people should require greater accountability of their commissioned officers, that they abide by their oath and never allow politically motivated propaganda like this exercise on any post or base again.”

Another observed, “Whether this is complacency by officers who do not see such orders as a problem, or worse, officers who recognize the problem but do not insist the orders are changed, this is a serious problem. We are discussing the training of American citizen soldiers in the use of potentially deadly force against a specific group of political dissenters. There is never a time in an officer’s career in which he does not have a duty to apply critical thought to the orders he is given and asked to give. It is my opinion that any officer that has allowed these orders to persist, to reach the level of junior officers and soldiers, has demonstrated a lack of judgment or apathy towards what his duty requires of him. Either way, we should demand more of the commissioned officers, who we as a nation empower to lead our sons and daughters into battle.”

Indeed, and at best, the blatant malfeasance on the part of the individuals who composed this exercise reflects poorly on the uniformed services.

The antidote to this patent misrepresentation of peaceable Patriots is to expose it with the Light of Truth. As our motto Veritas vos Liberabit affirms, the Truth shall set you Free!

(Note: To report examples of politically motivated “exercises” in either the civilian or military sectors of our federal government, please contact us — NewsTip@PatriotPost.US)

When people on the left simply cannot come up with rational arguments to use against their opponents it is inevitable that they play the race card. Often in conjunction with the “it’s for the children” card. Sorry, but that just does not cut it anymore, we are on to you, and those things just don’t work any longer. But? You just keep on playing those ace’s and eights.

Racist, or just tired of too much government?

“Democrats last week began a well-orchestrated campaign to change the subject from Obamacare by declaring Republicans the newest terrorist threat. House Majority leader Steny H. Hoyer claimed that Democrats faced threats of violence in their home districts. He demanded that Republicans take a stand against it. ‘Silence gives consent,’ added Majority Whip James E. Clyburn, who accused Republicans of ‘aiding and abetting this kind of terrorism.’ Democrats promptly exploited their own fear-mongering by rushing out a fundraising letter. Meanwhile, a shot was fired through the window of Republican House Minority Whip Eric Cantor’s Richmond office. Instead of attempting to fill his campaign coffers over the incident, Mr. Cantor denounced Democratic recklessness in creating ‘media vehicles for political gain.’ To hear Mr. Clyburn talk, you’d think the Capitol had been bombed — like President Obama’s spiritual mentor Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground did in 1971 or the communist Revolutionary Fighting Group did in 1983. We don’t recall Republicans placing the blame on Democrats for those bona fide terror attacks committed by the Democrats’ ideological cousins. For the party’s leaders to make such insinuations now rings hollow. The Democrats and their supporters have consistently demeaned and mischaracterized the broad, nationwide, nonviolent grass-roots movement that arose in opposition to their radical agenda. A willing press establishment relays baseless claims that these protesters are violent uncritically and without investigation. … Any leftist thug is now free to toss a brick through a Democratic congressional district office window secure in the knowledge that the act of vandalism will be blamed automatically on Tea Partiers or Republicans. Such hoaxes are tickets to instant press coverage. … This victimization sideshow is meant to hide the fact that Democrats are pursuing policies that the American people oppose, and they are beginning to face a political price.” —The Washington Times

Anger, venom and bile: “I know how the ‘tea party’ people feel, the anger, venom and bile that many of them showed during the recent House vote on health-care reform. I know because I want to spit on them, take one of their ‘Obama Plan White Slavery’ signs and knock every racist and homophobic tooth out of their Cro-Magnon heads.” –Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy

That’s racist! “[T]he current surge of anger — and the accompanying rise in right-wing extremism — predates the entire health care debate. … If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play.” –New York Times columnist Frank Rich with a tired refrain

“[W]hat are the tea partiers really angry about? Health care reform or the fact that it was an African-American president and a woman Speaker of the House who pushed through major change?” –MSNBC host Chris Matthews

Which one of these is not like the other? “[The ‘Don’t Tread on Me‘ flags are] the same imagery that was on [Oklahoma City bomber] Timothy McVeigh, you know? I mean, this is the kind of thing that’s worrisome to me. I don’t see how you can get away from it.” –Fox News contributor Juan Williams, trying desperately to make a connection between the Tea Parties and terrorism

Non Compos Mentis: “Because I think there’s been very consistent strategy from the right to racialize public policies so that poor white people who are often most vulnerable or most in need of those policies will vote against it to align themselves with a certain kind of whiteness, whiteness of property. So the poor white guy in Mississippi who needs welfare votes against welfare because he thinks he’s voting against a poor black woman in Harlem.” –CNN’s Marc Lamont Hill

It’s not fair: “[M]aybe we have reached the point where the Congress needs to equal it out. Equal out the audience. … I think that, you know, hell, if we’re going to be socialist, let’s be socialist all across the board.” –MSNBC radio host Ed Schultz, advocating for the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” simply because Rush Limbaugh has far more listeners than he does

Mark Alexander really let loose with yesterdays column. When will all eyes be opened as they are at the Patriot Post. (See sidebar)

Alexander’s Essay – December 17, 2009

The Time Has Come

“It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth — and listen to the song of that syren, till she transforms us into beasts. … Are we disposed to be of the number of those, who having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not?” –Patrick Henry

The 2008 presidential election was much more than a referendum on the two candidates; it was a referendum on the ability of a majority of Americans voters to discern between one candidate who possessed the character and integrity of a statesman, and one who did not.

A year ago, a majority of our countrymen were hoodwinked into electing a charlatan with dubious credentials to the highest constitutional office in the land. Since then, millions of Americans who had become complacent about the Leftist threat to our liberty have begun to realize that our Constitution is now suffering an unprecedented assault.

There were those of us who realized in 2004 — back when Teddy Kennedy and John Kerry let him take center stage at the Democrat National Convention — that Barack Hussein Obama was a Marxist. Nonetheless, too many of our countrymen were lulled into believing that no leftist politico with such abhorrent extra-constitutional views on the role of government could rise to be president of the United States.

The awakening that has occurred since November of ’08 is like nothing I have witnessed since the first election of President Ronald Reagan in 1980. After the economic and foreign policy disasters created by the Carter administration, Americans were stirred to action. Yes, the election of Bill Clinton in 1992 resulted in a conservative takeover of the House two years later, but Clinton was far more moderate than Obama, and his election didn’t inspire millions of Americans to arm themselves for the first time.

That Obama’s election inspired a wave of conservative activism is good news.

The great news is that since last November, millions of Americans have joined our ranks.

And the momentum continues unabated.

I knew we were turning a corner a few months back, when an establishment Republican, typical of most such Republicans, told me that Obama’s health care proposal “amounts to socialism.” This same fellow told me a year earlier that calling Obama a Socialist was just too severe. When I reminded him of his earlier admonishment, he said simply, “My eyes are now open.”

If Barack Obama has given us one thing of value, it is the opportunity to clearly discern between Left and Right, between rule of men and Rule of Law. He is the quintessential socialist, and his domestic and foreign policies present a contrast between tyranny and liberty that has rarely been so apparent. Many who have been hitherto reluctant to rise on behalf of liberty or have been too comfortable to be concerned by such conflict, are now making an ever-louder stand.

Obama is the personification of Leftist philosophy and dogma, and in a turn of irony, for the clarity he has provided to that end we owe him a debt of gratitude.

Despite the fact that the Leftists in media and academia have had a stranglehold on public opinion, seating one of their own as president, which they believe is a great prize, may well be their undoing.

Then: “My fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” –John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, 1961

Now: “Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do for you.”

Then: “I have a dream that my children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” –Martin Luther King, Address from the Lincoln Memorial, 1963

Now: “I have a dream that my children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the content of their character but by the color of their skin.”

Today, Democrat Party Leftists deride the notion of individual rights. Instead, they advocate the supplanting of individual liberty with statism.

They promote the notion of a living constitution rather than the authentic Constitution our Founders established.

They despise free enterprise and advocate socialist redistribution of wealth, the ultimate goal of which is to render all people equally poor and dependent upon the state.

They loathe our military and our national sovereignty, and they propose to replace it with treaties that establish supranational governmental legal and policing authorities.

They detest traditional American values, and they support all manner of behavior resulting in social entropy.

Being debated right now is whether an additional 17 percent of the U.S. economy is going to be nationalized under ObamaCare, and whether the rest of the economy is going to be shackled by cap-and-trade taxes in addition to a plethora of other job-eliminating taxes on private sector employers.

Would it surprise you to know that, while Democrat impositions on lending practices are largely responsible for the fact that millions of Americans are now out of work, the number of government “workers” making over $100,000 per year has increased 30 percent since the beginning of the current recession? There are more than 10,000 bureaucrats earning more than $150,000 annually, and the average federal salary is $71,206, not including generous government benefits, while the average private sector salary is $40,331.

Obama and his Democrat Congress have endowed future generations, unless soon reversed, not with liberty but with historically unprecedented levels of debt, which will enslave them to hyperinflation.

Conservatives and liberals can argue various policy points ad nauseam, but the question Americans are asking in greater numbers is this: Are we a nation governed by Rule of Law or the contemporaneous opinions of men?

History provides us with repeated evidence that the terminus of nations that are governed by men rather than laws is tyranny. In the last century alone, hundreds of millions have been enslaved under statist dictators such as Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco, Hitler, Mao, Kruschev, Pol Pot, Ho Chi, Idi Amin, Castro, Hussein, Mugabe, Kim Jong-Il, Chavez, Hu Jintao and others. Who might be next?

Surely not us?

Obama has clearly delineated the difference between individual rights and statism, between free enterprise and socialism.

Alexander Hamilton said, “In disquisitions of every kind there are certain primary truths, or first principles, upon which all subsequent reasoning must depend.”

Today, more and more Americans are returning to the core principles upon which our nation was founded, which made it the freest and most productive in history. There is a renewed commitment to support and defend Essential Liberty.

John Adams wrote: “Human nature itself is evermore an advocate for liberty. There is also in human nature a resentment of injury, and indignation against wrong. A love of truth and a veneration of virtue. These amiable passions are the ‘latent spark’ … If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?”

I believe that a supermajority of us are fully capable of understanding the truth, if given the right information and opportunity.

As Thomas Paine noted, “Such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.”

Of course, Barack Obama and his liberal lawmaking brethren have done us great harm this past year, and it may take several election cycles, or a revolution, to turn that around. But, the fields are being plowed and seeds sown.

Ronald Reagan delivered an enduring challenge to conservatives entitled “A Time for Choosing“: “You and I are told we must choose between a left or right,” Reagan said, “but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man’s age-old dream — the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order — or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.”

Patriots, the time has come to choose.

Reagan also outlined a plan for “The New Republican Party,” stating, “The principles of conservatism are sound because they are based on what men and women have discovered through experience in not just one generation or a dozen, but in all the combined experience of mankind. When we conservatives say that we know something about political affairs, and that we know can be stated as principles, we are saying that the principles we hold dear are those that have been found, through experience, to be ultimately beneficial for individuals, for families, for communities and for nations — found through the often bitter testing of pain, or sacrifice and sorrow.”

If Republicans want to regain majority status, the RNC must purge those who have forsaken the first principles of conservatism for power. In their stead they must lift up those who are devoted to the Rule of Law and Essential Liberty, those who incorporate Reagan’s charge, and that of generations of Patriots before him. They must back real conservatives instead of arrogant pretenders (see Toomey v. Specter). Short of bold new leadership, what remains of the Republican Party will end up on the trash heap of political irrelevance.

Patriots take heart: Do not wither during these difficult times. For as George Washington advised, “We should never despair, our Situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth new Exertions and proportion our Efforts to the exigency of the times.”

Indeed, the next several years will be a vital test for Patriots and our countrymen. Let us choose to persevere, to make our cause that of all men, to make no peace with oppression.

In 1776, Peter Muhlenberg delivered a sermon, concluding, “There is a time for all things, a time to preach and a time to pray, but those times have passed away. There is a time to fight, and that time has now come.” He removed his clerical robes and set out to command the 8th Virginia Regiment of the Continental Army.

Patriots, we have great opportunity before us, and once again the time has come to fight for it.

So many things are going on at once that I think it’s a strategy of the left. Distract, and then slip things through that otherwise would not pass muster. Once again, The Patriot Post provides meaningful analysis.

The BIGGEST LIE Yet

“It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth — and listen to the song of that siren, till she transforms us into beasts. … For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it might cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.” –Patrick Henry

Sometimes the biggest lies come under cover of a truth.

Such was the case this week, when Barack Hussein Obama proffered this observation about deficits: “I think it is important, though, to recognize if we keep on adding to the debt, even in the midst of this recovery, that at some point, people could lose confidence in the U.S. economy in a way that could actually lead to a double-dip recession.”

“Keep on adding to the debt”? From this, one might conclude that Obama has never suggested such a thing, and is truly concerned about deficits.

His revelation came amid discussion of tax reductions engineered to increase employment, as if our Constitution has a provision for that, anymore than for Obama’s other proposals.

Obama is feigning concern about deficits now that there is discussion of tax cuts, which he concludes would increase deficits.

“At some point, people could lose confidence in the U.S. economy”? Like the Red Chinese, who hold more U.S. government debt than any other nation ($800 billion), and upon whom we are depending to fund more of our debt. No coincidence that Obama’s remarks were made while on his most recent appeasement tour in Beijing.

“Even in the midst of this recovery”? What recovery?

Oh, the one that his $787 billion “hope-n-change” big-government payout package was supposed to ensure?

At the time of that proposal, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office offered this summary: “In the longer run, the [Obama] legislation would result in a slight decrease in gross domestic product compared with CBO’s baseline economic forecast.” Put another way, the CBO static scoring projected that Obama’s big government pork giveaway would hinder economic recovery. Dynamic scoring by economists shows a much worse destiny.

But Obama warned, “If nothing is done, this recession might linger for years. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.”

Now, after a quick assessment of the Obama Recovery through October, one is stuck with the conclusion that his spending spree has resulted in 10.2 percent unemployment — except, of course, in such places as Washington, DC, where government jobs are immune to recession.

That would be double-digit unemployment — so now you know why Obama cleverly framed his recovery program in terms of jobs “created or saved.” His administration announced that through October, the American Recovery Act had “created” or “saved” 640,329 jobs. However, a growing number of skeptics, even among his once-adoring media, found some very questionable accounting methods used to come up with that figure.

Recovery reality check: Remember when Obama claimed, “This is our moment, this is our time to turn the page on the policies of the past, to offer a new direction”?

That is a reference to Obama’s v Reagan’s policies, big government solutions v. free enterprise solutions.

Ronald Reagan’s economic policies unleashed an unprecedented period of growth, which continued right up until the financial sector collapse in ’08, a calamity resulting from policies implemented during the Clinton years, which undermined the values of derivatives used as collateral due. Those policies, as we now know, gave license for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to back high-risk loans to unqualified buyers, thereby setting the stage for the subprime mortgage meltdown and the crash of 2008.

Recall that in 2005, Sen. John McCain sponsored the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act, saying, “For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac … and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market. … If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.”

McCain noted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac regulators concluded that profits were “illusions deliberately and systematically created by the company’s senior management.”

McCain was right, but Democrats, including Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, ensured that nothing would be done to alter current practices at Fannie and Freddie. “These two entities … are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” Frank said at the time.

The net result of the derivative dilution was a crisis of confidence in the U.S. economy, second only to that which led to the Great Depression.

Remember when Obama claimed, “We are fundamentally transforming the United States of America”? Well, we’re in mid-transformation, and how are things looking now?

Obama also said, “Generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was our time.”

Indeed, his time to saddle them and their children with unprecedented debt, not only from his “stimulus” folly, but next up, ObamaCare, and then his job-killing cap-and-tax scheme.

If you think you can count on the administration’s estimates of the true cost of ObamaCare, think again. The Washington Times recently reminded us of the estimated cost of Medicare shortly after Democrats implemented it in 1965. Then, it was predicted to cost $12 billion by 1990. In actuality, it cost $98 billion, which is to say the original estimate was short by more than a factor of seven.

In my home state of Tennessee, we’ve already been there and done that. Our state’s version of ObamaCare, known as TennCare, implemented by Democrats in 1994 ostensibly to contain healthcare expenses, has quickly grown to consume more than a third of state revenues.

The CBO now says that the $1 trillion estimated cost of ObamaCare is “subject to substantial uncertainty.” How’s that for qualifying understatement?

As for the big picture, U.S. National Debt topped the $12 trillion mark this week, or approximately $39,000 for every man, woman and child in America, and the federal deficit that Obama now pretends to be concerned about hit a record high $1.42 trillion for fiscal year 2009.

Obama’s administration projects that the national debt will top $14 trillion by this time next year, and my sense is that they’re being modest. At the current pace, within 10 years our national debt will exceed our Gross Domestic Product.

We can be certain that Obama’s solution to deficits will not be less government. Instead, it will be unprecedented tax increases, a.k.a., socialist redistribution of wealth, a.k.a., “the fundamental transformation of America.”

The Tax Foundation now estimates that to offset deficits, “Federal income tax rates would have to be nearly tripled across the income spectrum,” with the lowest bracket at 27 percent and the highest at 95. Even the CBO estimates that rates would have to exceed 80 percent, and that’s before state and local taxes.

Do you get the picture, folks?

Obama will succeed in his effort to socialize the U.S. economy, using the tax code as his hammer and sickle, unless growing ranks of Americans object to the fact that he has no constitutional authority to do so.

Yesterdays Patriot Post posed several questions, and answers. Using the work of three of America’s brightest minds from past and present an assessment is made of the current status here in America. Draw your own conclusions.

“It is obvious what the fraudulent issue of fascism versus communism accomplishes: it sets up, as opposites, two variants of the same political system; it eliminates the possibility of considering capitalism; it switches the choice of ‘Freedom or dictatorship?’ into ‘Which kind of dictatorship?’ — thus establishing dictatorship as an inevitable fact and offering only a choice of rulers. The choice — according to the proponents of that fraud — is: a dictatorship of the rich (fascism) or a dictatorship of the poor (communism). That fraud collapsed in the 1940’s, in the aftermath of World War II. It is too obvious, too easily demonstrable that fascism and communism are not two opposites, but two rival gangs fighting over the same territory — that both are variants of statism, based on the collectivist principle that man is the rightless slave of the state — that both are socialistic, in theory, in practice, and in the explicit statements of their leaders — that under both systems, the poor are enslaved and the rich are expropriated in favor of a ruling clique — that fascism is not the product of the political ‘right,’ but of the ‘left’ — that the basic issue is not ‘rich versus poor,’ but man versus the state, or: individual rights versus totalitarian government — which means: capitalism versus socialism.” –philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

“Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many ‘czars’ appointed by the President, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent? Did you think that another ‘czar’ would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers — that is, to create a situation where some newspapers’ survival would depend on the government liking what they publish? Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called ‘experts’ deciding who could and could not get life-saving medical treatments? Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life and death decisions about your loved ones? Does any of this sound like America? How about a federal agency giving school children material to enlist them on the side of the president? Merely being assigned to sing his praises in class is apparently not enough. How much of America would be left if the federal government continued on this path? … How far the President will go depends of course on how much resistance he meets. But the direction in which he is trying to go tells us more than all his rhetoric or media spin. Barack Obama has not only said that he is out to ‘change the United States of America,’ the people he has been associated with for years have expressed in words and deeds their hostility to the values, the principles and the people of this country. … Nothing so epitomizes President Obama’s own contempt for American values and traditions like trying to ram two bills through Congress in his first year — each bill more than a thousand pages long — too fast for either of them to be read, much less discussed. That he succeeded only the first time says that some people are starting to wake up. Whether enough people will wake up in time to keep America from being dismantled, piece by piece, is another question — and the biggest question for this generation.” –economist Thomas Sowell

“Ah! Re-regulation. What a great idea. As I recall, the Soviet Union and old Eastern Bloc tried heavy government control and regulation, and it didn’t work. The people rebelled. They wanted economic freedom, the right to keep their own money, the right to start their own businesses and the right to climb the ladder of success in a free economy. Now here’s a counter-thought. The Ronald Reagan free-market revolution, which included regulation lite, a sound dollar and low tax rates, launched a three-decade-long boom. And yes, the Gipper’s policies were copied around the world. … So why not try something different? Unfashionable as it may be today, why not go back to the supply-side model of lower marginal tax rates for individuals and businesses, large and small? … It’s the incentive model of economic growth. At lower tax rates, where folks keep more of what they earn and invest, greater after-tax rewards spur greater work effort and investment risk. They also boost asset values. This is exactly what the economy needs: a rejuvenated dose of incentives — permanent incentives. Think of this: At the same wage level from cost-conscious businesses, a 10 percent personal tax cut provides a handsome after-tax wage-increase incentive that will spur individuals to go back to work — simply because work will pay more after-tax. … That’s the message for economic freedom fighters everywhere: Unite, and throw off your chains. Especially here in America.” –economist Lawrence Kudlow

“Conservative arguments against President Obama are becoming increasingly silly. They oppose Obama rescuing businesses despite all the jobs on the line, they’re against government taking control of health care from soulless insurance companies, and they oppose increased taxes on energy consumption despite the sorry state of the environment. And why do they oppose these most sensible actions? Because of their irrational, brain-dead obsession with liberty. Of course, everyone likes freedom — to a point — but there are a number of loud, stupid Americans who just take it to ridiculous extremes. They hoard their freedoms like greedy little dwarfs hoarding gold when they have little actual use for most of it. People need rules and order and guidance, but they hardly ever need liberty. Liberty doesn’t feed your family. Liberty doesn’t heal you when you’re sick. Liberty doesn’t educate your children. A strong government can do all those things, but apparently that’s against liberty. … Just look at this ludicrous debate over health care reform. Of course the government should provide health care for everyone; how obvious can anything be? The government has the money and smart people working for everyone’s interests to make sure all get health care, so why would anyone be against that? Because apparently people aren’t ‘free’ to make their health care choices for themselves. … Real freedom is not having to worry about health care, and that’s what you get when you have the government take it over. Yes, you’ll have little control over who gets what kind of care, but some people will just have to suffer some for the betterment of the whole. The advantage of having the government in control is that it makes sure the fewest number suffer, and those that do aren’t particularly important. … Most of the civilized world has moved beyond this uncompromising view of ‘freedom’ — if they were ever foolish enough to adopt it in the first place. Can you think of any other country that would permit its citizens to have guns like America does? Of course not; that’s beyond moronic. People know freedom is a dangerous, scary thing, and you have to be careful how much you tolerate.” –columnist Frank J. Fleming

“President Obama’s speech to the United Nations has been called naive and even ‘post-American.’ It was something else, as well: the most extravagant excursion into self-worship we have yet seen in an American leader. Beware of politicians who claim to be ‘humbled by the responsibility the American people have placed upon me.’ It’s a neon sign flashing the opposite. And sure enough, in almost the next sentence, the president allowed that ‘I am well aware of the expectations that accompany my presidency around the world.’ Really? The whole world pulses with hope and expectation because Obama is president? People in Amsterdam, Sao Paulo and Taipei have a spring in their step because an Illinois Democrat won the White House?” –columnist Mona Charen

“America is 233 years old. Some think that there are ample accomplishments speaking to our character and cause that predate Obama’s ascension to the presidency. Feh, Obama seems to be saying. Look instead to our new greatness, for we have elected a man like him! Having anointed himself America’s vindicator and redeemer, Obama’s real purpose seems to be to become the leader not of the free world but, simply, the world.” –columnist Jonah Goldberg

“With President Obama presiding over ‘the historic session,’ the U.N. Security Council approved unanimously an American resolution committing all nations to work for — please sit up straight for this — a world free of nuclear weapons. Somewhere in the fine print was a clause praising small babies, little puppies and chocolate candy. The resolution was so harmless that even Russia, China and several ‘developing’ nations (the usual euphemism for the socialist satraps) voted for the resolution.” –columnist Wesley Pruden

“The president’s announcement that the United States would not deploy long-range missile defenses in Eastern Europe after all was astonishing because George W. Bush had negotiated so patiently with the Czechs and Poles, who took considerable risks in cooperating with Washington. … The Poles, Czechs and everyone else must hope that Obama got something from Russia in return. For now, the president looks more chump than champ. The president’s men made him look like a rube just off the turnip truck for how he gave the word to the Polish and Czech presidents, treating them to a midnight telephone call the night before he announced his decision. It looked like an afterthought, and probably felt that way, too.” –columnist Suzanne Fields

“Liberalism holds that there is no human problem that government can’t fix if only the right people are put in charge.” –former Alaska governor Sarah Palin

And then from the file non compos mentos we have…

Civil discourse 101: “The Republicans lie. They want to see you dead. They’d rather make money off your dead corpse. They kind of like it when that woman has cancer and they don’t have anything for her. That’s how the insurance companies make money, by denying the coverage.” –MSNBC’s Ed Schultz

Braying Jackass: “[T]his crazy anti-government talk [at town hall meetings] isn’t improving any body’s life. The clown show is over. It’s better now to look like you’re at least hopeful of getting a better health care plan for the country, even if you vote against it.” –MSNBC’s Chris Matthews

We hope not: “Do you think the president’s done a good enough job selling government as the solution?” –NBC’s David Gregory to Bill Clinton

The depth and seriousness of Leftmedia “journalism”: “Who would you want to swap lives with for a week?” –CBS’s Cali Carlin to Maggie Rodriguez, who answered, “Hands down, Michelle Obama.”

Defending indoctrination: “I mean, this is children. They’re singing a song. And I’m not clear myself. If you can make your point again about why this is indoctrination, political indoctrination to praise your president. I remember certainly in elementary school when Ronald Reagan was president and we sent him jelly beans. We designed all of these things about Ronald Reagan. We sent them to him. And I don’t think everybody in the class ended up a Republican because of that. … It’s about praising the president and making our country great again.” –MSNBC’s Norah O’Donnell defending the video of New Jersey kids singing to BO — another video surfaced of kids in North Carolina doing likewise

Followed by…

What Would We Do Without Almost 90% of Americans?: “Almost 90% of Americans Think Media Helped Get Obama Elected” –NewsBusters.org

“Obama and his commissars are labeling Americans who just happen to oppose Cap & Trade, billions for clunkers and to the havoc the leftists are trying to wreak on our health care system, as brainless sheep. Large groups of citizens rise up to voice their grievances and he calls them mobs, claims that grass roots are really made of Astroturf and tells his minions to ape the Soviets and rat out their friends and neighbors. Some people I know refer to what Obama is doing as social engineering. I think it’s something even worse: socialist engineering. I wonder if anyone else has noticed that whenever a black conservative voices an opinion, the liberal claque insists that he’s not an authentic black, and when a white conservative voices an opinion, Obama’s sycophants insist he’s not an authentic American. When Obama was running for the presidency, a few of us Paul Revere wannabes were warning you: ‘The reds are coming! The reds are coming!’ Naturally, Obama, a born and bred race hustler who learned his lessons well from Jeremiah Wright, wanted you to believe that the only reason people could possibly have for opposing him was his race. But it was never about the color of his skin. It was always about the color of his politics.” –columnist Burt Prelutsky

“I traveled on the Tea Party Express tour bus as a singer/songwriter, entertainer and spokesperson; 16 states, 34 rallies in two weeks. I experienced vicious racial verbal attacks, not from the tea party protesters. The racial hate expressed against me all came from the left, people who support President Obama’s radial socialist agenda. … These racists are outraged by my opening lines I boldly proclaimed at each rally. ‘Hello my fellow patriots! I am NOT an African-American! I am Lloyd Marcus, AMERCIAN!‘ … The tea party audience’s passionate response to my proclamation was a surprise to me. I did not know so many Americans disapproved of hyphenating pushed on us via political correctness. … Liberals’ response to my YouTube videos, columns and performances on the Tea Party Express have been extremely racist, vicious and hate-filled. In their incredible arrogance, they vilify me for loving my country and not viewing myself as a victim of white America. In the sick minds of liberals, as a black man in America, I must support President Obama regardless of his policies. I must resent white America. I must feel entitled to the earnings of other Americans. My belief that my success or failure is totally in the hands of myself and my God is anathema to them. As to the claim that the tea party protesters are racist, they are not. Quite the opposite. At every rally, with thousands in attendance, I was overwhelmingly showered with affection and thanks for standing up for America. … These protesters are not racist. They are decent hard working ordinary Americans who love their country and disapprove of the radical changes planned by the Obama administration.” –singer, songwriter and columnist Lloyd Marcus

“Hospitals across the country are going bankrupt because the federal government forces them to provide free services to illegals. This situation appears to have angered some segment of the population, in particular, American citizens who pay taxes to support the hospitals, but then are forced to spend hours writhing in pain in hospital waiting rooms. With Americans in a boiling cauldron of rage about the government’s impotent response to the tsunami of illegal immigrants, last year, both political parties ran candidates for president who favor amnesty for illegal immigrants. And now Democrats have the audacity to tell us to our faces that national health care won’t cover illegals. Not only that, but they tell us we must not be able to read if we think it does. … [S]ection [246 of the bill], which liberals keep brandishing like a DNA-stained dress, states: ‘Nothing in this subtitle shall allow federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.’ In other words, illegal aliens are excluded from precisely one section of the thousand-page, goodie-laden health care bill: Section 246, which distributes taxpayer-funded ‘affordability credits’ to people who can’t afford to pay for their own health care. Even this minor restriction on taxpayer largesse to illegals will immediately be overturned by the courts. But the point is: Except for vouchers, the bill does not even pretend to exclude illegals from any part of national health care — including the taxpayer-funded health insurance plan. Moreover, liberals won’t have to wait for some court to find that the words ‘nothing in this subtitle shall allow’ means ‘this bill allows,’ because the bill contains no mechanism to ensure that the health care vouchers aren’t going to illegal aliens. Nor does the bill prohibit the states from providing taxpayer-funded health care vouchers to illegals. Democrats keep voting down Republican amendments that would insert these restrictions — just before dashing to a TV studio to denounce anyone who says the health care bill covers illegal aliens.” –columnist Ann Coulter

And then we have…

“On Thursday, the administration scrapped its missile defense plans for Eastern Europe. The ‘courageous’ Czechs and Poles will have to take their chances. Did the ‘threat from Iran’ go away? Not so’s you’d notice. The dawn of the nuclear Ayatollahs is perhaps only months away, and, just in case the Zionists or (please, no tittering) the formerly Great Satan is minded to take ’em out, Tehran will shortly be taking delivery of a bunch of S-300 anti-aircraft batteries from (ta-da!) Russia. Fancy that. Joe Klein, the geostrategic thinker of Time magazine, concluded his analysis thus: ‘This is just speculation on my part. But I do hope that this anti-missile move has a Russian concession attached to it, perhaps not publicly (just as the U.S. agreement to remove its nuclear missiles from Turkey was not make public during the Cuban Missile Crisis). The Obama administration’s diplomatic strategy is, I believe, wise and comprehensive — but it needs to show more than public concessions over time. A few diplomatic victories wouldn’t hurt.’ Golly. We know, thanks to Jimmy Carter, Joe Klein and many others, that we critics of President Obama’s health care policy are, by definition, racist. Has criticism of Obama’s foreign policy also been deemed racist? Because one can certainly detect the first faint seeds of doubt germinating in dear old Joe’s soon-to-be-racist breast: The Obama administration ‘needs to show more than public concessions over time’ — because otherwise the entire planet may get the vague impression that that’s all there is. Especially if your pre-emptive capitulations are as felicitously timed as the missile-defense announcement, stiffing the Poles on the 70th anniversary of their invasion by the Red Army. As for the Czechs, well, dust off your Neville Chamberlain’s Greatest Hits LP: Like he said, they’re a faraway country of which we know little. So who cares? Everything old is new again.” –columnist Mark Steyn

Between the blogs and MSM one might think that Christ had risen again, and once again been crucified. I’m not one of those people, not by a long shot. I call the shots as I see them when it comes down to the wire, and Ted Kennedy came down to the proverbial wire. Still, I wanted to do so in an honest and forthright manner. While still recognizing the man’s numerous faults.

Once again, Mark Alexander beat me to the essay. (Punch being inappropriate phraseology at this time, at least in my thinking.) Also, for the left wing preacher that lam-blasted me when I opined about the now late Senator? I’m not a Christian in your sense, I am a cold blooded Libertarian with Conservative tendencies. I refuse to speak well of a man that caused so much pain and death while he lived a life of opulence, and depravity.

Alexander’s Essay – August 27, 2009

Lion of the Left

“The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families. … Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.” –John Adams

Teddy Kennedy

Have you ever attended a funeral service out of respect for a friend or colleague, and left perplexed as to whom the eulogy was referring? Just once, I would like to go to a service for some disreputable rogue and have a clergyman deliver a eulogy that was faithful to the facts rather than full of fiction. (Hopefully, that won’t be my own!)

I am certainly not suggesting that we should stand in judgment of any man, for that is the exclusive domain of our Creator. However, we should never abandon our responsibility to discern right from wrong.

On that note, Edward “Teddy” Kennedy (22 February 1932 — 25 August 2009) died this week at age 77.

Kennedy spent the last 47 of his years as a senator, having been perpetually re-elected by the people of Massachusetts. This made him the third-longest serving senator — behind Robert Byrd (D-WV) and Strom Thurmond (R-SC) — in that chamber’s august history.

Of course, a fawning Leftmedia will inundate us with non-stop coverage of Kennedy’s life, featuring interviews with his political sycophants up to, and probably well after, his interment at National Cemetery. The airways and printed pages are already sodden with accolades, mostly framing the senator’s life as one of great personal tragedy but great public success.

Let’s take a look at both.

Kennedy was born into great wealth, privilege and political influence, the fourth son and ninth child of Joseph and Rose Kennedy. He never worked a day in a private-sector job, and like his brothers before him, he owed his political career to his father’s considerable political machinations.

But, the mainstream media’s reference to TK’s life as one punctuated by personal tragedy is an understatement.

Before the age of 16, he had suffered through the death of his brother Joseph Kennedy Jr. (his father’s heir apparent), who died when his B-24 bomber exploded over Surrey, England, during World War II, and the death of his sister Kathleen Agnes Kennedy, who died in an airplane crash in France.

In 1941 his father ordered a lobotomy for Ted’s sister, Rosemary Kennedy, then age 23, because of “mood swings that the family found difficult to handle at home.” The procedure failed and left Rose mentally incapacitated until her death in January 2005 at age 87.

Ted, like his brother John, developed a reputation as a serial womanizer in college. Unlike his Ivy League brothers, however, Ted was kicked out of Harvard for cheating, though allowed to return a few years later to complete his undergraduate degree.

Thanks to some election-night manipulation of returns by Old Joe, JFK was elected president in the closest race of the 20th century (49.7 percent to Richard Nixon’s 49.5 percent). That paved the way for TK’s victory in a 1962 U.S. Senate special election in Massachusetts.

The thrill of victory was brief, however. On 22 November 1963, during a political visit to Dallas, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

In June 1964, Ted Kennedy was flying with friends on a private plane that crashed on a landing approach, killing the pilot and a Kennedy staffer. Kennedy survived but suffered severe injuries.

On 4 June 1968, Robert Kennedy, then a candidate for the Democrat Party’s nomination for president, was assassinated after a Los Angeles political event. The political baton then went to Teddy, the last of the four Kennedy brothers, but his alcohol abuse and philandering would keep the presidency out of reach.

In 1969, on one of his infamous junkets to “the island” (Martha’s Vineyard and Chappaquiddick), Kennedy’s moral lapse would cost a young staffer her life, and would cost him any chance of becoming president.

On the night of 18 July, Kennedy left a party with an attractive young intern en route to a private secluded beach on the far side of Dike Bridge. Kennedy lost control on the single-lane bridge and his vehicle overturned in the shallow tidal water. (Note: I drove across this bridge in a large 4×4 truck a few years after this incident, and it was not difficult to keep it out of the water — but then, I was not intoxicated.)

Kennedy freed himself from the vehicle leaving his passenger, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne to suffocate in an air pocket inside the overturned car. After resting at the water’s edge, he walked back to the party house, and one of his political hacks took him back to his hotel.

Mary Jo Kopechne

Nine hours later, after sobering up and conferring with political advisors and lawyers, Kennedy called authorities to report the incident. Kopechne’s body had already been discovered.

With the help of Father Joe’s connections, Kennedy was charged only with leaving the scene of an accident. In his testimony, he claimed, “I almost tossed and turned… I had not given up hope all night long that, by some miracle, Mary Jo would have escaped from the car.” He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to serve two months in jail — sentence suspended.

With Joan, his pregnant wife of 10 years, and their three children by his side, he claimed that charges of “immoral conduct and drunk driving” were false and he was promptly re-elected to his second full Senate term with a landslide 62 percent of the vote. However, his responsibility for the death of Kopechne would all but disqualify him from ever holding national office. Indeed, the moral composure of the nation differs significantly from that of his Massachusetts supporters and defenders.

Kennedy’s political advocacy swung evermore to the left in the years that followed, and his personal conduct led the way.

In January 1981, Joan announced she had had enough, and they divorced.

Two Senate terms later, Kennedy was partying at the family’s Palm Beach compound with his nephew, William Kennedy Smith, who was charged with the rape of Patricia Bowman during that evening. The Kennedy machine was able to undermine Bowman’s charges by assassinating her character ahead of the trial.

Not surprisingly, Kennedy was an ardent backer of his friend Bill Clinton after the latter lied about sexual encounters with a subordinate White House intern in 1998.

In turn, Clinton awarded Kennedy the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which, along with the Congressional Gold Medal, is the highest civilian award in the U.S. It is designated for individuals who have made “an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.”

Setting aside all of his personal tragedies, what about the tributes and rave reviews of Kennedy’s public life, his success as a legislator?

According to Barack Obama, “Our country has lost a great leader, who picked up the torch of his fallen brothers and became the greatest United States Senator of our time.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insists, “No one has done more than Senator Kennedy to educate our children, care for our seniors and ensure equality for all Americans. Ted Kennedy’s dream of quality health care for all Americans will be made real this year because of his leadership and his inspiration.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid adds, “Ted Kennedy’s dream was the one for which the Founding Fathers fought and for which his brothers sought to realize. The Liberal Lion’s mighty roar may now fall silent, but his dream shall never die.”

Oh, really?

Kennedy has a very long legacy of legislative accomplishments, but not one of them is expressly authorized by our Constitution, that venerable old document he has repeatedly pledged by oath “to support and defend.”

Kennedy’s long Senate tenure was, in fact, defined by hypocrisy.

For example, consider that this fine Catholic boy’s advocacy for abortion and homosexuality was second to none.

In regard to Operation Iraqi Freedom, consider his claim during the Clinton years: “We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction.” A few years later, with his cadre of traitorous leftists at his side, Kennedy claimed, “The Bush administration misrepresented and distorted the intelligence to justify a war that America should never have fought.”

Who can forget Kennedy’s outrageous 2006 inquisition into the integrity of then Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito? In 1987 when Ronald Reagan nominated Alito to be a U.S. District Attorney, Kennedy’s vote was among the Senate’s unanimous consent. And when Sam Alito was nominated for the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in 1990, he again received Kennedy’s vote and unanimous consent from the Senate. But after impugning Alito’s character in his Supreme Court hearings, Kennedy blustered, “If confirmed, Alito could very well fundamentally alter the balance of the court and push it dangerously to the right.”

Of course, Kennedy was an expert at “borking” judicial nominees. Indeed, he is responsible for the coining of the term. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan nominated an exceptional jurist, Robert Bork, to the Supreme Court. During Bork’s confirmation hearings, Kennedy proclaimed, “Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens.” Despicable.

But among über-leftists like Kennedy, there is perhaps no greater hypocrisy than the fact that they are among the wealthiest of Americans but pretend to be advocates for the poor. Of course, they never give up their opulent trappings and lifestyles while pontificating what is best for the masses. (I have written on the pathology associated with this hypocrisy under the label “Inheritance Welfare Liberalism, or “rich guilt” if you will.)

And there is a long list of Kennedy legislation that has proven disastrous.

Second only to the looming disaster of his pet nationalized health care promotion, Kennedy led the charge for the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, ending quotas based on national origin. He argued, “[O]ur cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. The ethnic mix of our country will not be upset. …[T]he bill will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area…”

How did that one turn out?

Kennedy also had some dangerous dalliances with the Soviets in 1983, endeavoring to undermine Ronald Reagan’s hard line with the USSR. Fortunately, his efforts did not prevail.

But Kennedy did have one thing in common with his older brothers: He had powerful oratorical skills.

At the 2004 Democrat Convention to elect his lap dog, John Kerry, Kennedy, who wrote the book on political disunity, declared to delegates, “There are those who seek to divide us. … America needs a genuine uniter — not a divider. [Republicans] divide and try to conquer.”

Fortunately, the American people weren’t buying his rhetoric — at least not until the 2008 convention, when Kennedy joined Barack Obama’s “hope ‘n’ change” chorus: “I have come here tonight to stand with you to change America…. For me this is a season of hope — new hope for a justice and fair prosperity for the many, and not just for the few — new hope. And this is the cause of my life — new hope that we will break the old gridlock and guarantee that every American — north, south, east, west, young, old — will have decent, quality health care as a fundamental right and not a privilege.”

Predictably, and before the man has even been laid to rest, there is already a rallying cry from Ted Kennedy’s grave: The Left and their mainstream media talkingheads are exhorting us to fulfill the late senator’s misguided mission to nationalize health care. (I checked, and the Constitution doesn’t authorize this either.)

As I contemplate the life of Ted Kennedy, I am left with two primary conclusions.

First, Ted Kennedy was no JFK.

In his 1961 Inaugural Address, John Kennedy said famously, “My fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” Ted Kennedy inverted that phrase to read, “Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do for you,” and in the process, turned the once-noble Democrat Party on end.

Second, a man who can’t govern his own life should never be entrusted with the government of others.

One of our most astute Founders, Noah Webster, wrote, “The virtues of men are of more consequence to society than their abilities. … In selecting men for office, let principle be your guide. Regard not the particular sect or denomination of the candidate — look to his character.”

In Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, the first use of “government” is defined in terms of self-government, not the body of those who govern.

Despite the Left’s insistence that private virtue and morality should not be a consideration when assessing those in “public service” (unless, of course, they are Republicans), the fact is that the two are irrevocably linked.

Finally, in 1968, when Ted Kennedy delivered the eulogy for his brother, Robert, he said, “My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life…”

I would hope that whoever is slated to deliver Ted Kennedy’s eulogy follows that advice because we do a disservice to him and our country to suggest Kennedy was anything more than he was.

I do not know who will bestow his final tribute, but I do know it will not be Mary Jo Kopechne.